David Duke

MOSCOW--Lost track of David Duke, who first made a name for himself in the 1970s as the supposed fresh, modern face of the Ku Klux Klan? If so, his latest opus can be found here, on sale in Russia's parliament.

For the past two years, the man who promised to move the Klan out of the cow pasture and into the hotel meeting room has been spending more and more time in a rented Moscow apartment, building bridges to right-wing nationalists in the new Russia.

He has held a rally at a respected literary museum, signed autographs at the Russian Writers Union and met with members of parliament, including a retired Soviet general, Albert Makashov, who is known for anti-Semitic remarks. And the preface to Duke's book was written by one of ex-President Boris N. Yeltsin's former ministers.

Since last month, bookstalls operating next to the cafeteria in the Duma, parliament's lower house, have been selling Duke's first book in Russian: ''The Jewish Question Through the Eyes of an American.''

According to the local office of the Anti-Defamation League, the book--with a glossy black cover portraying a suited, serious-looking Duke--is a classic anti-Semitic tract and appears to have been selling briskly.
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The former Klansman served in the Louisiana Legislature in the 1980s and ran for the U.S. Senate in 1990. Until recently, he was an elected committeeman of the Republican Party in his home Louisiana parish. He left the Klan years ago and now presents himself as the president of a group he calls the National Organization for European American Rights.
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